Star Trek:Odyssey 28:Directives Part 2
by rylansato
Summary: Captain Allensworth and the crew of the Alexandria have stumbled upon the wreckage of the USS Thunderchild on a planet in the Gamma Quadrant. The crew is missing and one thing adds more to the mystery: the Thunderchild has been there for 200 years.
1. USS Thunderchild

Star Trek: Odyssey: Directives

Part 2

_Captain's Log: Stardate: 59001.3: We have come across the derelict body of the USS Thunderchild on an uninhabited planet in the Gamma Quadrant. The last known location of the Thunderchild was near Theta Cygni. And now we find the ship abandoned and unsalvageable. One thing that has been on the forefront of my mind since we discovered the ship is: Where is the crew? Wherever they are, I hope they are safe, if they're still alive._

It was a lifeless husk, its back broken, its mammoth form half buried in the shifting sands of the ground. Engineers from the Alexandria swarmed over the primary hull of the Thunderchild. They took tricorder readings in between shielding their faces from the scouring lash of a sand laced hurricane speed like winds.

A sudden gust of whipped Lieutenant Commander Hoshi Sato Zofchak's long, dark ponytail over her shoulder. When she first came aboard and became a member of the Alexandria's crew, her hair was just past chin length but she had grown it out to a longer length, a length that was about the same as what she had when she was recruited by Captain Jonathan Archer to join the crew of the NX-01 Enterprise. She swatted her hair away from her face as she squinted into the blinding crimson flare of the rising suns. Adding to the brightness was a shimmer of light with a humanoid shape, a few meters away from her. The high pitched drone of the transporter beam was drowned out by a wailing wind in minor chords. As the sound and shine faded away, the silhouette of Jermaine Allensworth strode toward her across the buckled hull plates.

"How are things going, Commander?" He asked.

"Slowly." Hoshi said. "We didn't really expect to find one of our own ships crash landed on a planet in the gamma quadrant." She started walking and nodded for him to follow her. "We're seeing some unusual subatomic damage in the hull. Not sure what it means yet. All we know for sure is the Thunderchild has been here for about two hundred years."

"Two hundred years?"

Hoshi nodded. "Yes, sir. We can't seem to find any reason how that may have happened."

They reached the forward edge of the primary hull, where the force of impact had peeled back the metallic skin of the Akira class starship to reveal its space frame.

As Hoshi and Allensworth descended into the ship, Allensworth asked more questions. "Have you been able to identify any of the crew?"

"We haven't found any bodies." Hoshi said. "No remains of any kind" Her footsteps scraped across grit covered deck plates as she led him toward the ship's core.

A dusty haze in the air was penetrated at irregular angles by narrow beams of sunlight that found their way through the dark wreckage. As they moved farther from the sparse light and deeper into the murky shadows of deck nine, Hoshi thought she saw brief flashes of bluish light, moving behind the bent bulkheads at the edges of her vision. When she turned her head to look for them, she found only darkness and she dismissed the flickers as residual images fooling her retinas, as her eyes adapted to the darkness near the ship's core.

"Is it possible they abandoned ship and settled somewhere on the planet?"

"Maybe, but most of their gear is still on board and this desert goes on for nine hundred kilometers in every direction. I don't think they would've made it very far." She said as they turned the corner toward a dead end, where Hoshi's husband, Lieutenant Commander Dustin Zofchak hunched beneath a low hanging tangle of wires.

"Commander," Allensworth said. "Any luck?"

"Not yet, sir." His short brown hair was matted with sweat and dust. The two officers stepped up behind him as he continued in his eastern North American intonation. "It's a damned museum piece is what it is."

The trio heard footsteps approaching; they turned around to find Lieutenant Julia McKenzie. The security chief had been in charge of the search for the crew's remains. Her uniform was streaked with smears of dirt and grime, and a faint speckling of dust clung to her long blond hair. "We finished our sweep, Captain." She said, her eyes darting nervously back down the corridor. "There's no sign of the crew or anyone else.

"What about combat damage?" Allensworth asked. "Maybe they were boarded and captured."

McKenzie shook her head. "I don't think so, sir. All the damage I saw fits with a crash landing. There are no blast effects on the internal bulkheads, no marks from weapons fire. Whatever happened here, it wasn't a fire fight." Nodding toward the route to the exit, McKenzie spoke anxiously. "Can we get out of here now?"

"What's wrong, Lieutenant?" Allensworth asked, whose attention had sharpened in response to McKenzie's apparent agitation.

The human woman cast another fearful look down the corridor behind her and frowned as she turned back toward her captain and both Zofchaks. "There's something in here. I can't explain it but I can feel it. There's a sgail watching us."

"A ghost?" Allensworth asked almost allowing a smile to slip from his control. From time to time, McKenzie would use words of her Irish heritage to describe something.

"I don't know. But I heard things, and I felt the hairs on my neck stand up, and I keep seeing blinks of light in the dark…"

"Blue flashes?" Hoshi cut in.

"Yes!" McKenzie said sounding excited by Hoshi's confirmation.

Allensworth shook his head, smiling and started walking. He figured the darkness of the ship was getting to his officers. "We'll head back up to the surface. Keep on things, Commander."

"Aye, sir." Zofchak said.

Commander Alex Merriell stood on the bow of the Thunderchild. He wondered what had happened to the crew. The fact that a ship from the 24th century crash landed on a planet is not unheard of, but a ship from the 24th century crash landed on a planet and shows signs of being there for over two hundred years was in fact unheard of. He wanted to get to the bottom of this mystery as soon as possible. He watched Engineers and science specialists of the Alexandria swarm over the derelict ship.

Lieutenant Liz Dowler, one of the Alexandria's senior science officers, approached the first officer. Lieutenant Dowler's expertise was astral anthropology but she offered to assist in any way she could with this investigation.

"Good news, Commander." She said. "The engineering team is powering up the Thunderchild's computer now. I thought you might want to come down and have a look."

"No thanks, Lieutenant." Merriell said. "I'd prefer to stay topside." One of the advantages of being first officer was that he only had to answer to one person and that being the captain. It spared him the potential of embarrassment of admitting that his walk though of the Thunderchild earlier that day had left him profoundly creeped out. While touring deck six, he'd been all but certain that he saw spectral blue flashes that had lurked around the edges of his vision.

To his silent chagrin, multiple sensor sweeps and tricorder checks had detected nothing out of the ordinary on the Thunderchild. Maybe it had been him imagination or a trick of the light, but he'd felt the same galvanic tingle on his skin that other crewmembers had described while being down in the ship, and he'd been overcome by a desire to get out of the wreck's stygian corridors as quickly as possible.

He'd doubled security detail on the planet but had said nothing about thinking the ship might be haunted. One of the drawbacks of being a superior officer was the constant need to maintain semblance of rationality, and seeing ghosts didn't quite fit the bill.

Dowler squinted at the scorched white sky and palmed a layer of sweat from her forehead, up through her brown hair. "Did it actually get hotter out here?"

"Yeah, it did." Merriell said. "Where are you with the metallurgical analysis?"

"Almost done, sir. So far we detected molecular distortion in the space frame consistent with intense subspatial stress."

"What was the cause?" Merriell asked.

"Hard to be sure." Dowler replied.

"In other words, you don't know." Merriell said.

"I'm not prepared to make that admission yet. I don't have enough data to form a hypothesis, but my tests have ruled out several obvious answers."

"Such as?"

"Extreme warp velocities, wormholes, quantum slipstream vortices, Iconian gateways, and the Q. Time travel is an obvious answer to how they appeared two hundred years in the past but that's all we have to go on."

"Keep on it, Lieutenant. Something moved this ship clear across the galaxy and we need to know what it was and we need to know soon."

"Understood, Commander." Dowler turned and headed towards the aft section of the ship, towards a group of engineers who were assembling a bulky assortment of machinery that would conduct a more thorough analysis of the Thunderchild's bizarrely distressed subatomic structures.


	2. The Depths of the Ship

Allensworth entered the Alexandria's conference room to see his senior officers waiting from him. He took his seat at the head of the polished, black granite conference table.

Merriell sat to his immediate left, with Johnson next to him and Plumley next to her and then Dowey. Across the table from Merriell sat Nycz, then Hoshi, then Dustin, then McKenzie and then Dowler.

"Let's get started." Allensworth said once sitting down.

Merriell leaned forward. "The salvage of the Thunderchild's logs is underway, Captain."

"How much of their data have you been able to gather?"

"About forty-seven percent. We're dividing our time between downloading the sensor logs and the flight records."

Allensworth turned to Johnson. "Have you made any progress in analyzing their data?"

"Some." She said. "By cross referencing the two sources, we're developing a simulation of the Thunderchild's crash landing and its approach to the planet. We're starting from the last synchronous data points and working backward from there."

"How far along is the simulation?"

"We've locked down roughly the last thirty seconds before the Thunderchild impacted the surface." Johnson replied. "It looks as if the ship had been on autopilot."

"Any idea by whom?" Merriell asked.

Johnson shook her head. "Not yet, sir. We're not even sure when it was activated. It might have been online for minutes or could've been flying the ship for years."

Allensworth nodded. "I'd like to know what happened to the ship, as to why it's here and to how exactly it traveled two hundred years in the past. Alex, I want all of our resources focused on this. Keep me posted on your efforts. Dismissed."

The senior officers stood up half a second after Allensworth and then moved towards the doors to leave the conference room.

"This place gives me the creeps." Lieutenant Greer Kordik said as her voice echoed down the Thunderchild's empty engineering deck.

Lieutenant Kena Crist looked up from the power distribution node she was dismantling, brushed a sweaty lock of hair from her face, and scowled teasingly at the fidgety young Bolian woman. "Don't tell me you're seeing ghosts, too?"

Her eyes darted one way and then another. "Not ghosts, but something's been following us since we came up from deck eleven." A low, reedy moan of wind disturbed the dusting of fine particle sand that lay on the deck.

Crist sighed. She pointed her palm light down one corridor and then another before aiming it squarely into the Bolian's face. "Who's following us? The invisible man?"

"Lieutenant, I'm serious. There's something here."

"Fine." Crist said, hating to humor superstitious behavior but it seemed to her that the only way to get Kordik back to work would be to take her seriously for a few moments. She set down her coil spanner, stood up, and lifted her tricorder from its holster on her hip. "This'll take a few seconds. I'm running a full spectrum scan for life forms and energy readings. Anything special you want me to look for?"

Kordik shook her head and continued to shift her gaze every few seconds, as if she expected something to try and ambush them.

"Is it just me, or are all Bolians a bit jumpy?" Crist asked.

Ignoring her companion's question, Kordik continued looking down the corridors. "Can't you feel it? It's like a charge in the air."

"I'm not reading anything unusual." She said hoping her matter of fact tone would calm her. She pivoted as her scan continued. "No bio signs in this section but us."

"There are things tricorders can't read." Kordik said. "Trace elements, exotic energy patterns, extradimensional phenomena…"

"And paranoia." Crist interrupted. "I can't believe I really have to tell you there's no such thing as…" A flicker of blue light behind a bulkhead caught her eye and Kordik's as well.

"Did you see that?" Kordik cried out.

Taking a breath to suppress her irritation, she focused the tricorder in the direction of the flash. "Residual energy." She said, her tone one of mild rebuke. "Just a surge in the lines. Makes sense when you think how much juice we're pumping into a ship that's been here for two centuries."

"Not down here." Kordik replied as she lifted her tricorder to show Crist a schematic on its screen. "The main power relay was severed in the crash and both the backups are slagged. There's no pwer on this deck. "She pointed at the nearby bulkhead. "So where did that come from?"

Another groan of hot, dry wind pushed through the fractures in the bulkheads. Crackles of noise echoed off the metal interiors of the passageway, growing closer and sharper. Then a light fixture on the overhead stuttered momentarily to life and flared brightly enough to force Crist to shut her eyes. Its afterimage pulsed in myriad hues on her retina.

"Lieutenant!" Kordik shouted. She tugged on her sleeve. "Come on."

Shielding her eyes with her forearm, she backed away from the glare and tapped her combadge. "Crist to…"

Twisted forks of green lightning exploded from the light, in a storm of shining phosphors and searing hot polymer shards. The synthetic shrapnel overpowered Crist and Kordik, peppering their faces with bits of burning debris as the bolts of electricity slammed into their torsos and hurled them hard to the deck.

A steady high pitched tone rang in Crist's ears. Spasms wracked her body, but she barely felt them, she was numb from the chest down. Her mouth was dry, and her tongue tasted like copper. As the last of the light's glowing debris fell to the deck and faded away, darkness settled upon her and Kordik.

Then a spectral shape formed in the blackness, as pale and silent as gathering fog. It descended like a heavy liquid sinking into the sea, spreading, dispersing, and enveloping the two down Starfleet officers on the deck.

For a moment, Kena Crist told herself that she was imagining it, that it was nothing more than a trauma induced hallucination, another afterimage on her overtaxed retinas.

Then Kordik screamed, and as the ghostly motes pierced Crist's body like a million needles of fire, she did too.

Lieutenant Julia McKenzie ran through the darkness of the corridor, toward the cluster of downward pointed palm lights. A charred odor thickened the sultry air.

Four Alexandria security officers stood with their phaser rifles slung at their sides, facing one another in a circle. McKenzie nudged past them and stopped as she saw the two bodies at their feet. Both corpses were contorted in poses of agony and riddled with deep, smoldering cavities. In some places, the two engineers' wounds tunneled clear through their bodies, giving McKenzie a view of the deck, which was slick with greasy pools of liquefied biomass.

McKenzie turned to Lieutenant Éclair Ryan, the away team's security supervisor. "Who were thay?"

"Kordik and Crist, sir." Ryan said. "They were collecting evidence for analysis."

McKenzie squatted low next to the dead Bolian and examined her wounds more closely. "What killed them?"

"We're not sure." Ryan said. "We picked up some residual energy traces, but nothing that matches any known weapons."

Pointing at a smoking divot in Crist's abdomen, McKenzie said. "These look like thermal effects."

"Partly." Ryan said as she pushed a handful of her auburn hair from her face. "But we think those are secondary. The cause of death looks like molecular disruption."

The security chief shook her head. "I've never seen a disruptor do this. Did you check for biochemical agents?"

"Yes, sir." No biochem signatures of any kind."

It was a genuine mystery, exactly what McKenzie hated most. Everyone on the Thunderchild had heard the bloodcurdling screams emanate from the ship's lower decks and echo through its open turbolift shafts, but McKenzie was determined to contain and compartmentalize as much information about this incident as she could. "Who's been down here?"

Ryan swept the beam of her palm light over the security officers on the scene, T'Lana, sh'Karas and Lumiere. "Just us." She said.

"Keep it that way." McKenzie said. "Have those bodies beamed to sickbay on the Alexandria. I want Doctor Plumley to start the autopsies immediately."

"Aye, sir." Ryan said.

"And not a word of this to anyone." McKenzie said, making eye contact with the four officers in succession. "If anyone asks…"

"If?" Lumiere interrupted.

McKenzie corrected herself. "When you are asked about what happened, the only thing I want you to say is that there was an incident and that it's under investigation. Don't mention fatalities, injuries or anything else. Do not mention Kordik or Crist by name. Is that understood?" The four officers nodded. "Good. I want you for to secure this deck. Move in pairs and maintain an open channel to the Alexandria." If you encounter anything that might be capable of this, fall back and call for back up. Clear?" Their heads nodded again in unison. "Make it happen."

Ryan pointed at the other security offices as she issued their orders. "sh'Karas, sweep aft with T'Lana. Lumiere, forward with me." She looked at McKenzie. "Sir, I suggest you beam up to the Alexandria and track our search from there." She then looked to the others. "Move out."

The four security officers split up and walked away in opposite directions, with one member of each pair monitoring a tricorder's sensor readings while the other kept a phaser rifle leveled and ready. McKenzie remained with the bodies as her team continued moving away. Their shadows spread and then vanished beyond the corridors. In less than a minute, McKenzie was alone, her solitary palm light casting a harsh glow over the dead. Bitter regrets festered in her thoughts.

_I was so focused on not fueling their fears that I failed to protect their lives. I should have kept an open mind, no matter what they told me._

McKenzie still didn't believe that the two hundred year old wrecked starship was haunted, but the twisted, horrific corpses in front of her left her no doubt that she, and her away team, were definitely not alone on the Thunderchild.


	3. Investigations

Doctor Amanda Plumley had seen some gruesome spectacles during her career in Starfleet, but the pair of crispy molten corpses that had been beamed into her sickbay from the Thunderchild qualified as one of the most unique and horrifying.

After completing the preliminary autopsies, she had decided to beam down from the Alexandria with a mixed team of medical investigators and security specialists, all of whom, including herself had training in forensics.

She and the rest of the group emerged from the coruscating haze of the transporter beam inside an oppressively dark section of a corridor in the engineering section of the Thunderchild. Before she or any of the members of her team could activate their palm lights, a light snapped on in front of them. Its beam was aimed into her eyes, half blinding her.

As she raised her arm for shade, she pierced the darkness and saw the grim frown of Lieutenant McKenzie. "I told the captain no one should come down here." She said.

"He didn't agree." Plumley replied, as the other members of her team activated their own lights, filling their section of the passage with pale blue light and overlapping shadows. "I have orders to collect evidence. Lead the way, please."

McKenzie scowled as she turned and led the group through the curved passageway. The Thunderchild was a small ship compared to the Alexandria and it was a short walk to the scene of the mysterious homicides. They were still a few sections away when the odors of putrefaction started to become overwhelming. Plumley suppressed her gag reflex, a skill she learned while dissecting cadavers in medical school.

Then they arrived at the scene of the two deaths and it was every bit as horrible as Plumley had imagined it would be when she'd seen the corpses. With the bodies removed from the corridor, all that remained were isolated pools of congealed liquids and stains of scorched blood, all surrounding the humanoid shaped patches of clean deck plating.

"Have at it." McKenzie said. She then stepped away and tapped her combadge. "McKenzie to Ryan. Regroup at location alpha, we have visitors."

"Acknowledged." Ryan replied through the combadge.

Plumley squatted beside the pockmarked puddle of boiled flesh and half disintegrated synthetic fabrics. She lifted her tricorder and activated a series of preprogrammed scans. "All right, let's get to work quickly before the good lieutenant here has an aneurism worrying about us."

"I don't worry, Doctor." McKenzie replied. "I anticipate undesirable events and outcomes, and try to prevent them."

"Well, you should take it easy." Plumley said. "At this rate, you'll anticipate yourself to death."

The security chief rolled her eyes and walked away. Plumley turned her attention to the results of her tricorder's molecular scan. Around her, the forensic specialists worked at a brisk pace, keeping their conversations to a minimum. Some were removing core sample; one was gathering scrapings of charred tissue or swabs of still tacky liquefied biomass. One of the security specialists was creating a holographic documentation of the corridor.

Plumley noticed but ignored Lieutenant Ryan's approach, who took a sentry position a few meters away. Plumley continued working while fighting the urge to retch. Ignoring the rotten odor of burned skin and fat did not make it go away, but Plumley clung to the fading hope that her nose might soon acclimate to the sickly stench so she could concentrate solely on her work.

Outside the cocoon of light in which Plumley and her team worked, a dim sparkle formed in the impenetrable darkness. That faint glimmer multiplied with a sonorous rush. Sound and light blossomed a few sections down the corridor, and a humanoid figure took shape inside the transporter beam's prismatic halo.

Captain Allensworth emerged from the fading glow and found himself illuminated by half a dozen palm lights.

"As you were." He said lifting his hands in front of his face. The beams were redirected, leaving him in a penumbra of reflected light.

McKenzie slipped past the forensic team and moved to meet the captain. Plumley flipped her tricorder closed and followed McKenzie. Together they intercepted Allensworth, who raised his chin toward the forensic team. "What do we have?"

"Still no definite cause of death." Plumley said.

Before Plumley could elaborate, McKenzie spoke. "We've ruled out friendly fire, and my team has kept this deck secured since the bodies were found. Except for the doctor and her team, no one has been down here."

"My preliminary autopsies found evidence of neuroelectric damage in both subjects' brain tissues, and their bodies exhibit molecular dissociation on all levels, from the epidermis to the marrow."

Allensworth looked to McKenzie. "What can kill like that?"

"The caustic effects are similar to damage inflicted by the Horta." McKenzie said.

"Except that the caustic injuries were highly localized." Plumley pointed out. "And instead of fusing synthetic and organic matter on the corpses, it dissolved them without mixing them."

McKenzie narrowed her eyes and clenched her jaw. "Which is what made me think of an Aineian predator called a tyku." She said with ill masked irritation.

"But the tyku doesn't possess anything like a neuroelectric attack. And if memory serves, it lives and hunts in environments with a peak temperature of no more than two degrees Celsius." Plumley said.

"Yes, I admit, it's a bit warm for a tyku on this planet." McKenzie said crossing her arms. "But a Denebian Slime Devil…"

"Would leave a trail of easily followed slime back to its watery lair, neither of which seems to exist within a thousand kilometers of here." Plumley said.

"Doctor." Allensworth said. "Instead of telling me what the killer isn't, can you offer any insight about what it might be?"

"Not at the moment, Captain." She said.

"McKenzie, send non-security personnel back to the Alexandria and run a hard target search of every compartment, locker, jefferies tube on this ship. If whatever killed our people is still here, I want it found."

"We could use some extra sensor capability." McKenzie said.

Allensworth nodded. "I'll have Zofchak free up whatever you need." He looked at Plumley. "Has your team collected enough evidence for analysis?"

"Enough for a start." Plumley said. "But I'd really like to widen the search to see if…"

"Denied." Allensworth said. "I need you on the ship, analyzing the date we have in hand."

Disappointed, Plumley nodded. "Aye, sir. I just hope we haven't missed anything."

"You're going to have to make do with what we've got."

The desert swelled around Lieutenant McKenzie and seemed poised to reclaim the husk of the Thunderchild in its shifting embrace. She stood near the top of the downed ship's saucer section, watching the evacuation grind forward.

She tapped her combadge. "McKenzie to Talbot. How much longer till you're ready to beam up?"

Through the beige veil of the growing sandstorm, she looked aft and saw the engineer turn and look her way as he answered over the com. "A few more minutes." The wind howled and whistled and he had to shout to be heard over the wail. "We're rounding up the last of the small stuff."

"Quickly, Ensign." McKenzie said.

"Just a few minutes, sir. I promise."

"Notify me the moment you're ready. McKenzie out."

The engineer turned away and resumed work, helping researchers and their enlisted assistants carry equipment out of the THunderchild through an aft hatch on one of the lower decks. The crates were gathered in a neat, stacked cluster several meters from the ship, between its broken and off kilter warp nacelles. Through it all, the wind whipped sand at McKenzie's face.

Raging winds, shifting sands, the desert was ever changing but didn't really change. McKenzie had remained on the surface during the overnight shift and through the dawn. The deep watches of the night had settled, starry and frigid, on the broken bones of the Thunderchild until it coaced out the away team's breaths in huffs of thin mist. The gray majesty of predawn twilight had been short lived, blasted away by the swift ascent of one sun and then another.

Another blistering afternoon had seemed to be in store until minutes earlier, when the leading edge of a kilometers wide sandstorm hove into view, turning the sky the color of burnt umber. It was hurling the desert at McKenzie and the away team, and the force of it felt like millions of flying insects slamming against her uniform from every direction. She felt the sand working its way into everything; her boots, her uniform, her hair, her ears, her mouth, her nostrils, and it was still better than spending even another minute inside the Thunderchild.

She preferred the blinding stings of the storm to the rank odor of decaying flesh and blood, the grotesque perfume of scorched tissue and the sharp stink of burned hair. After spending the night below decks with the forensic team, McKenzie was relieved to be free of the bowels of the Thunderchild, and she and no intention of going back inside, not even if this damned storm buried her alive.

The section of Engineering where Kordik and Crist were killed had been sealed less than an hour earlier. The forensics team had collected so many samples and scrapings that they'd nearly scoured the deck plates clean. All that evidence was now secured about the Alexandria, where it was being subjected to an endless array of tests, none of which had so far yielded a single clue to the identity or even the nature of the killer.

McKenzie blamed herself. As far as she was concerned, her shipmates were all under her protection and it was her job to prevent tragedies like this. And she failed.

Defending them, she'd realized during her first few months after coming to this time after leaving the Xindi controlled universe from which she came, was her charge to keep, her purpose for being. The deaths of Crist and Kordik and been a painful reminder of that duty. In the hours since the attack, she had tripled the security presence in and around the Thunderchild. Armed guards had shepherded every research team, open channels had been maintained and everyone had been made to stick together.

The last warm bodies on the planet's surface now were herself, the two rifle toting guards down below and the four engineers and the two scientists they were protecting.

"Talbot to McKenzie." The engineer's voice, filtered through her combadge, was all but lost in the roar of the wind and the white noise of sand scouring the hull of the Thunderchild.

She shielded her eyes and squinted through a crack in her fingers. If Talbot was still down there, she couldn't see him. "Go ahead."

"Stand by to beam up in sixty seconds." Talbot shouted over the storm.

"Thank you, Ensign. McKenzie out."

She hated to leave while the deaths of her shipmates remained unsolved. Abandoning the ship, letting it be swallowed up by the sands, felt to McKenzie like a dereliction of duty. If the answer was still there, it might be lost by the time the wind liberated the Thunderchild from its shallow desert grave.

Another voice squawked, weak and hollow, from her combadge. "Alexandria to away team, stand by for transport."

Her muscles tensed and she closed her eyes while she waited for the hazy white and blue embrace of the transporter beam. Buffeted by the dry, hot gale and stinging granules, she held her breath and focused on continuing the investigation, by whatever means were available, when she returned to the ship.

_Did we find anything here that was worth two people's lives? OR was this all for nothing? _She wondered.

She suspected that, at that very moment, on the Alexandria Captain Allensworth was learning the answer to that question.

"That doesn't answer my question, Commander." Allensworth said who was starting to think the briefing was going in circles.

Lieutenant Dowey stood in front of a diagram of the subspace tunnel phenomenon on the conference room's wall monitor. "I'm sorry, Captain. Which question didn't it answer?"

"All of them." Allensworth said. "We've suspected since day one that a subspace phenomenon carried the Thunderchild here from the Alpha Quadrant. I want to know how it entered the phenomenon, as well as where and when."

Dowey paused. He cast a look to the other officers sitting around the conference room table. I don't have the data to answer that question right now, Captain."

"I thought we recovered all of the Thunderchild's logs and databases."

"We did, Captain." Dowler said. "But as I was saying before you…" She stopped as he noticed Merriell's warning glare, be she'd already crossed the conversational Rubicon and had to continue. "…before you cut me off, we detected a gap in their log chronology. Weeks separate their last data on the ambush from the start of their sensor logs about the phenomenon."

As much as Allensworth wanted to be upset with the lieutenant for her impolitic reproach of him, he knew, in hindsight that she was right. He had run roughshod over her in his impatience to reach some answers.

"Is it possible that it was a malfunction, or the result of damage?" He asked.

Dowler shook her head. "No, sir. No sign of damage or erasure. It's as if the ship's sensors just got turned off for that period of time, then snapped back on inside the phenomenon."

Allensworth turned back to Dowey. "What are the last regular entries in the Thunderchild's log?"

"A Tzenkethi ambush." Dowey said. "The ship's chief engineer tricked the Tzenkethi into thinking the Thunderchild was destroyed, but it was left without communications and warp drive, a few light years from Cardassian space."

"Any indication what their next plan of action was?" Allensworth asked drumming his fingertips on the table.

"None." Dowey said. "The last entry in Captain Stork's log is that their engines and communications array were irreparable."

Zofchak leaned forward. "The damage in their warp reactor and internal components of their comm. system still hadn't been fixed by the time they crashed here."

"For what it's worth, Captain, the data from their passage through the phenomenon was completely intact, and as detailed as could be."

"All right." Allensworth said, surrendering to the realization that his other questions would have to wait for another time. "What exactly, do we know about their journey through subspace?"

Merriell took over the briefing from Dowey, who returned to his seat as the first officer got up and stepped over to the wide wall monitor. "The Thunderchild was inside the phenomenon for about forty-seven seconds. The standard crew compliment of an Akira class starship is five hundred. There were about twenty-seven life signs aboard the ship when it entered the phenomenon. That leaves a hundred and ninety-five people unaccounted for."

"Could they have been killed during the ambush?" Allensworth asked.

Merriell looked to Dowey. "The logs identified two hundred and seventy-eight casualties and two hundred and twenty-two survivors."

Satisfied, Allensworth nodded to Merriell. "Once the ship passed inside the phenomenon, it got kicked around pretty good. The subspatial stresses were more volatile than those inside a wormhole or a controlled warp bubble."

"I can see the difference between this and a warp bubble." Allensworth said. "But what makes this different from a wormhole?"

Merriell nodded to Dowey again. The lieutenant used a touch screen interface in front of him on the tabletop to display animations on the large wall monitor. "Topologically, not much. Both, in essence, serve as passages for rapid travel between distant points in the same universe, or possibly different universes. Both are tubes with a topology of type one, with a mouth, or terminus, at either end and the throat, or tunnel, between them. The chief difference is where and how they exist."

He enlarged one of the schematics. "This is the Bajoran wormhole, a relatively stable shortcut through normal space-time. Its structure is made possible by a twelve dimensional, helical verteron membrane and a series of verteron nodes, which tune its as yet unknown energy source to maintain its tunneling effect through space-time."

Switching to the second schematic, Dowey continued. "This is the subspace tunneling effect the Thunderchild encountered. Its shape is basically identical, but there are two major differences between this and the Bajoran wormhole. First, it doesn't exist in normal space-time, it only exists in subspace. Seconds, and I just want to say this next point is purely conjecture, because no one has ever seen this work before, all of the Thunderchild's data suggest this phenomenon is powered by dark energy drawn from normal space-time. We think that's what led to the deaths of the crew."

"They were killed y the dark energy?" Allensworth asked.

"Not directly." Dowey said. "It was the by product that did them in; hyperphasic radiation."

"That would do it." Merriell said. "How fast did it hit?"

"I'd estimate every organic particle on the ship was disintegrated within twenty seconds of entering the subspace tunnel." Dowey said.

"But the ship spent forty-seven seconds inside the phenomenon." Allensworth said. "Yesterday, Johnson said the ship's autopilot had been engaged. When did that happen?"

"About fifteen seconds after the ship exited the subspace tunnel and returned to normal space-time." Merriell said.

"In other words, about forty seconds after every living thing on that ship was dead." Allensworth said.

His first officer cocked one eyebrow. "Give or take."

"And there's no record of who or what triggered the autopilot." Allensworth said. Dowey and Dowler nodded in confirmation. "maybe it's some kind of creature that lives out of phase most of the time. Could it be the same thing that attacked Kordik and Crist last night?"

Merriell answered with a shrug. "We don't know yet, sir."

"Captain, there's one more important note I'd like to share about the subspace tunnel." Dowey said.

"Go ahead." He said.

Dowey got up and walked to the wall monitor and pointed out some details as he spoke. "The energy field inside the tunnel was remarkably stable, much more than a conventional wormhole would be. If my analysis of its graviton emissions is correct, I think there's a very good chance the subspace tunnel is still there."

Allensworth looked at Merriell, who seemed as surprised by the news as he was. "Are you sure?" He asked.

"I'm almost positive." He replied. "If we can locate the terminus and make a successful passage of the tunnel, we might be able to figure out how it was created."

As if Allensworth needed more convincing, Merriell added. "If it leads back to a point in the Alpha Quadrant, it might also be a major strategic discovery for Starfleet."

"Okay." Allensworth said. "How do we find the terminus?"

"I have a few ideas." Dowey said. "It's too soon to say which approach will work. But if I'm right and it's still there, with Commander Zofchak's help, I'm fairly certain I could tack it down in a few hours."

"But the tunnel is full of hyperphasic radiation." Hoshi said.

"I can work around that." Dustin said waving away the problem. "A properly harmonized multiphasic frequency channeled into the shields should be able to cancel out their effects." He flashed an expectant look at Allensworth. "So, what's the word, Captain?"

Allensworth grinned. "The word is go. Dustin, get to work on those shields, Merriell, Dowey, start looking for the subspace tunnel. If there's…"

An alert klaxon sounded over the shipwide comm. system.

"McKenzie to Captain Allensworth."

"Go ahead." Allensworth said.

"Sir, I need to see you and Commander Merriell in shuttlebay one, immediately."


	4. The Runabout Maki

Merriell followed Captain Allensworth out of the turbolift on Deck eleven and followed him at a quick step toward the shuttlebay. At the first curve in the corridor, they were met by four security officers armed with phaser rifles. The quartet of guards fell into step around the two command officers and walked with them until they approached the open door to the shuttlebay, which was blocked by another duo of armed security officers. The pair stepped aside and let Allensworth and Merriell pass.

The first clue that something was amiss was the odor. Merriell wrinkled his nose at the sickly stench, which only became strong as he and the captain neared the cluster of armed security personnel that surrounded the runabout USS Maki.

Security chief McKenzie noticed their arrival. She stepped away from the group to meet them. "Captain, I think we have an intruder."

Before Allensworth could ask McKenzie to elaborate, the guards between them and the Maki parted, revealing a troubling sight through the runabout's open side hatch.

It was the slagged remains of a humanoid body, mixed with the burned taters of a Starfleet uniform. Much of the victim's skin was gone, exposing jumbled viscera, half-dissolved muscles and bones wet with liquefied fats and spilled blood. The half of its face that Merriell could see looked normal from the scalp to the nose, but everything from the upper lip to the chin looked as if it had been blasted away, down to the morbid grin of the skull. Its tongue was draped across its throat.

Forcing himself to remain detached and businesslike, he turned to McKenzie. "Have you identified the victim?"

"Ensign Jaros." McKenzie reported. "He was logged in for routine maintenance on the Maki."

Allensworth stepped forward, studying the scene with the eyes of a scientist. "How much do we know about what happened?"

"Not much more than we know about what happened to Crist and Kordik on the Thunderchild." McKenzie said. "Éclair is pulling the internal sensor logs and starting a forensic review."

Merriell averted his eyes from the stomach churning carnage inside the runabout. "Are we sure it's the same cause of death that we saw on the Thunderchild?"

"All but certain." McKenzie said. "I'm just waiting on final confirmation." She looked over Merriell's shoulder toward the shuttlebay doors. "And here it comes now."

Doctor Plumley entered the shuttlebay, followed by a female medical technician with an anti-grav stretcher. The chief medical officer paused as she saw the state of the body inside the runabout. She looked back at the medical tech. "We don't need a stretcher. Go back and get some sample containers and a stasis pouch." The technician nodded and reversed course, quick timing her way out of the shuttlebay and looking relieved for the opportunity.

Plumley approached the runabout with a wary frown. "Not again." She mumbled as she passed McKenzie. She opened her tricorder and started a scan of the half burned, half melted corpse. "Molecular disruption." She said reading from the tricorder's screen. "Acute thermal effects. Major breakdown in all organic material."

"Is the damage consistent with hyperphasic radiation exposure?" Merriell asked on a hunch.

"No, it's not." Plumley said putting away her tricorder. "Hyperphasic radiation desiccates organic matter and disperses it into subspace. Basically, it turns people into gas and dust. Whatever did this turns people in the broth."

Allensworth turned towards Plumley. "Was this done by the same thing that killed our people on the Thunderchild?"

As she considered her answer, Plumley crossed her right arm over her torso and tugged gently with his right hand at the lobe of one of her ears. "The effects are all but identical. So I'd have to say yes, it was."

"Jules," Allensworth said. "Sound a shipwide intruder alert. All nonessential personnel are restricted to quarters. Have your people sweep the ship bow to stern. Use sensors, hard target searches, whatever it takes. Something has followed us up here from the planet and I want it found, now."

Jermaine Allensworth emerged from his ready room shortly after oh two hundred hours, a bit bleary eyed and aching limbed. He was surprised to see many of his senior officers still at work on the bridge. He noticed the only two senior officers not present were Counselor Christine Nycz and Lieutenant Commander Hoshi Zofchak. Those two were probably in their quarters guarding their children in case the intruder decided to make a visit.

Alex Merriell was settled in the command chair as if he had been melted into it. He held a steaming beverage in one hand while holding a data padd in another. He looked up at Allensworth as he entered the bridge and stood up quickly.

As he stood up he spilled some of his beverage onto the back of his wrist and swore under his breath. Allensworth thought he heard him say something that began with the letter "F." Merriell dropped the padd into the chair and swapped the mug into his unburned hand and waved his now reddened hand in the air to cool it as Allensworth approached.

"I can really make a joke at your expense, Commander. But I'll hold back this time." Allensworth said with a smile.

"Much appreciated, sir." Alex replied as his hand waving slowed and sat down in his own chair.

Allensworth looked up to Lieutenant McKenzie, who was busy reviewing a steady stream of incoming data and reports. "Give me an update on the manhunt, Lieutenant." Allensworth said.

McKenzie's hands continued to manipulate data on her console as she looked up at the captain. "We've finished two full sweeps of the ship, Captain. So far, no intruder. According to Doctor Plumley's forensic reports, no new leads on the cause of death, and no progress devising a defense against it, whatever it turns out to be."

"That's not very encouraging, Jules." Allensworth said.

"No, Captain, it's not but I'd still like your permission to keep the ship on lockdown until we complete a third sweep of all compartments. We've switched to some fairly exotic detection methods this time around. It's a long shot, but I want to be as thorough as possible."

He admired McKenzie's refusal to admit defeat. "All right. Let's hope the third time's the charm."

McKenzie nodded her understanding and resumed her work as Allensworth walked to the aft station where Dustin Zofchak and Ra'chel Johnson were immersed in conversation about their wall of schematics and sensor data.

"How's your search going?" He asked the duo.

"We haven't found the subspace tunnel yet." Johnson said. "But not for lack of trying. We've been through the full range of likely triggers, and now we're trying the unlikely ones."

"Sounds like a common thing around here tonight." Allensworth said. He nodded at a screen showing a diagram of the Alexandria's shield emitter network. "What about the hyperphasic radiation inside the anomaly?"

"That we solved." Zofchak said. "If we ever find this thing, we'll be ready to try it."

Allensworth smiled at the pair. "Finally, some good news. Keep at it and let me know when we locate the anomaly."

"Will do, Captain." Zofchak said. He and the half Vulcan science officer returned to their hushed conversation about exotic particles.

Allensworth began walking towards his chair. Suddenly, an explosion thundered below decks and resonated through the bulkheads. The Alexandria pitched wildly and knocked Allensworth off balance. Then the ship's inertial dampers reset themselves and the heaving and rolling of the deck ceased. "REPORT!" Allensworth yelled.

McKenzie entered commands into the tactical console. "Explosion in shuttlebay one. Hull breach and explosive decompression in the bay."

"That bay was sealed after Jaros's body was found." Merriell said. "What the hell happened?"

Éclair, the relief ops officer, reconfigured her console to assess the damage and review the internal sensor logs of the explosion. "The Maki destroyed the bay doors with a torpedo." She looked back at the captain and the first officer with her bright yellow eyes. "It's leaving the shuttlebay, Captain."

Allensworth looked back at McKenzie. "Who's in the shuttle?"

"No lifesigns inside the runabout." McKenzie said. "But I'm picking up some wild energy readings."

Éclair chimed in. "It's accelerating to full impulse and breaking orbit, bearing nine three seven mark four."

"Pursuit course." Merriell said. "Full impulse."

"Aye, sir." Dowey said. The Alexandria veered away from the planet and fell in behind the fleeing runabout.

Johnson practically leapt away from the aft station. "Captain, there's a massive energy buildup in the runabout's sensor array. I think it's been reconfigured to emit a soliton pulse."

"Locking phasers." McKenzie said as if by reflex.

"Hold your fire, Lieutenant." Allensworth said as he watched the runabout on the main viewscreen. A moment later, a shimmering beam lanced out in front of the tiny ship and seemed to cut through space time like a scalpel. A slash through reality parted and revealed a tornado like passage of coruscating red and blue light. The runabout accelerated toward the tunnel.

"Captain." Merriell said. "We can catch it with a tractor beam before it crosses the aperture."

"No, Alex." Allensworth said shaking his head. "Whatever's on the runabout, I think it could've killed us all if it meant to. But that's not what it wanted. I think it came here from the other side of that passage. Now it's on a journey, and I want to see where it leads. Lieutenant McKenzie, raise shields. Helm, take us into the tunnel, full impulse."

Seconds later, the Alexandria plunged into the blinding maelstrom, close behind the fugitive runabout. Erratic fluctuations in the inertial damping system had Jermaine hanging on to the edge of the ops chair for balance, while Merriell held onto the navigator's chair. Allensowrth looked back to McKenzie for a tactical update.

"Shields holding, sir."

Less than a minute later, a pulsing circle of midnight blue appeared ahead of the Alexandria, the darkness at the end of the tunnel of light. The runabout shot out of the subspace passage, and the Sovereign class ship followed it back into normal space time.

"Position?" Allensworth asked.

"Alpha Quadrant." Dowey replied. "Near Theta Cygni."

"Captain." McKenzie said. "The runabout is reducing speed. Its power levels are dropping fast."

"Helm, hold station at ten thousand kilometers." Allensworth said. "Éclair, put a tractor beam on it."

On the main viewscreen, a blue beam from the Alexandria snared the runabout, which made no effort to evade it or break free. "Tractor beam locked, Captain." Éclair said. "Radiation levels inside the runabout are dissipating rapidly."

"It didn't even put up a fight." Merriell said. He lifted one eyebrow to express his suspicion as he looked to the captain. "After all that, it's just giving up?"

"I don't know, Alex." Allensworth said. "That's what I'm beaming over there to find out." He turned and headed for the turbolift. "Lieutenant, have two security officers meet me in transporter room three."

"With all due respect, sir, you should let a boarding team secure the runabout before you beam over."

"Captain's prerogative, Commander." Allensworth said with a smile. "Besides, you're coming along."

"Aye, sir."

"Ra'chel, you have the bridge." Allensworth said as the turbolift doors closed.


	5. Jario

Shapes emerged beyond the bluish white haze of the transporter beam, and Allensworth recognized the familiar close quarters of a runabout's empty aft compartment. The transporter effect faded. He looked around to confirm that the rest of the away team was with him. Merriell was at his right side and behind them were Ensigns Hiiragi and Izumi from the ship's security detail.

The two ensigns charged their phaser rifles. Merriell checked his tricorder and pointed the pair forward, toward the cockpit. Hiiragi took point with her rifle braced against her shoulder, moving in smooth easy strides that kept her aim steady. Her partner stepped to the control panel for the aft doorway and, on Merriell's signal, opened the door to the middle compartment of the small ship. Then she aimed her rifle around the corner and covered Hiiragi as she moved forward, her body pressed close to the port bulkhead in the short connecting passageway.

Allensworth started to follow them, but he stopped when he felt Merriell's hand on his arm. He held out his tricorder so he could see the information on its screen. Although it wasn't reading any life signs in the forward compartment, its motion and air density sensors had revealed a vaguely humanoid shape slumped against the cockpit's aft tactical console.

"Let them secure the ship first." Merriell said with a nod to the security officers . Hiiragi was keeping her weapon aimed at the hatch to the cockpit as Izumi advanced through the narrow passageway to the middle compartment.

As soon as both security officers reached the doorway, they looked back to Merriell for the order to proceed. He motioned to Allensworth to take cover near the corner and he moved to a relative safe position from which he could still observe what was happening. Then the first officer signaled Izumi and Hiiragi to advance.

Izumi reached up and tapped a button on the control panel. The hatch hissed open, revealing the darkened cockpit, whose only illumination came from the glowing nebula outside.

Just as the tricorder's scans had indicated, a large long limbed alien figure was collapsed on the deck, its narrow torso resting against the support strut for the tactical console. The upper and rear portion of its head was round, almost oval shaped. On either side of its head were tubules, whose ends dilated and contracted in a slow cadence. Pulsing in the same rhythm were ribbed, organe tubes that ermerged from its neck and curved over its shoulders before tapering and vanishing into its chest.

At the ends of its gangly arms were limp tendrils, and its feet had two forward toes joined by a V shaped point and a prominently clawed third tow near the rear of its instep, similar to a Velociraptor from Earth's past.

Its head swiveled slowly in Allensworth's direction. Lidless, almond shaped black eyes stared at him from a narrow face with a mouth that seemed capable of no expression but a grimace.

Hiiragi and Izumi kept their rifles aimed at the weak and apparently defenseless being, even as they looked back to Merriell for new orders. Merriell, in turn, looked to Allensworth.

He approached the creature with a hand signaling to the security guards to lower their weapons. He squatted down to the alien's eye level and examined the creature more closely. Its ivory looking skin was mostly white with faint hues of azure and scarlet.

"I'm Captain Jermaine Allensworth of the starship Alexandria."

The alien's mouth barely moved as it replied with a small whisper. "I am Jario of the Malkins."

"You were on the starship Thunderchild?"

Jario nodded. "Yes. Taken as a prisoner. Before entering the passage."

"Was it you who set the ship's autopilot after the crew died?"

Jario nodded again. "Yes. I hoped to control the vessel. Use it to return home. Thrown backwards in time. Too much damage. Couldn't stop the crash."

"That's why you stole the runabout." Allensworth said thinking aloud. "You were trying to get home. But what happened to my people? Did you do that?"

"Forgive me." Jario said. "Did not mean to kill. Weak without the combiner. Centuries alone. Drained energy from the ship's batteries until none was left. Hibernated in the machines, waiting for power." The alien's voice became hollow and distant. "So hungry, so cold. Saw heat and fuel. Had to feed. Was nothing but the hunger. Did not remember myself until this vessel's power restored me. Made me tangible again."

"I don't understand." Allensworth said. "Made you tangible?"

Jario's head lolled in his direction. "Needed power to rebuild myself for the return. But all for naught. Voices silenced. Combiner is lost. Fear the rest of the Malkins are lost."

Allensworth leaned closer. "What does that mean?" The alien didn't respond. It slid down onto the deck. He reached out and cradled its head in one arm and laid a hand on its bony, thin chest. "What is the combiner?"

No answer came. Before he could ask his question again, he realized that Jario's head was becoming less heavy in his arm, and then it weighed nothing at all. It disintegrated on his sleeve, along with the rest of its body. It all became a cloud of sparkling particles of dust that shimmered for a moment and then transformed into a dull, superfine powder.

Allensworth lingered in the shadows and dust and looked at the gray residue on his hands. He was torn between remorse at Jario's demise and relief at being rid of the entity that had killed three members of his crew.

Merriell stepped up beside her. "You live to make my job difficult don't you?"

"Yes, Alex, it's all about inconveniencing you." He said as he stood and clapped the dust from his hands. "I just don't get it. What did Jario hope to find here?"

The first officer shrugged. "Whatever it was. It doesn't seem to exist anymore."

"We don't know that. He and the Thunderchild were thrown back in time two hundred years. Not a lot of time has passed between the Thunderchild entering the passageway and now."

"Maybe." Alex said. "What I want to know is, if this is where the Thunderchild entered the subspace tunnel, why don't its logs have a record of its journey here?"

"No idea." Allensworth said as he nudged the powder on the deck with the tip of his boot. "But I bet Jario knew." He looked out the cockpit window and stared at the nebula. "I wish we could see where this all leads."

Before Merriell could say anything further, Allensworth's combadge beeped and was followed by the almost purr like voice of Lieutenant Commander M'Ress. "Alexandria to Captain Allensworth."

"Go ahead." Allensworth said as he tapped his combadge.

"Captain, we've just received a distress call. We're reeling in the runabout and beaming you and your team up in ten seconds. Stand by for transport."

"Wait." Allensworth said. "A distress call from where? From whom?"

"We're pinpointing the location now but it appears to be from Captain Stork."


	6. Compromises

Captain Allensworth, Commander Merriell, Lieutenant Commander Hoshi Zofchak and Lieutenant McKenzie stood with Captain Stork, as well as Mickind and the council of the Malkins. Not even an hour had passed since the Alexandria had entered orbit of a dark orb in space that was one of the remaining Malkin cities after the destruction of their planet.

The city erected a shell over itself and launched itself into space to avoid destruction. There were several other orbs like it as well but Mickind claimed there should have been more but some were caught in the planet's explosion and destroyed.

Captain Allensworthe was not at all pleased to hear Mickind tell him that he and his ship would not be permitted to leave now that they knew of the existence of the Malkins.

"You can't just keep us here in these cities." Merriell said.

"We are in the process of locating a a suitable, uninhabited planet that will fit our needs. You will be able to live there as well."

Captain Stork rolled his eyes. I don't understand how you can't just let us go. You saw what happened when you kept my crew prisoner. Whose to say that a few from Captain Allensworth's crew wouldn't do the same?"

"We would not give them the chance." Demo said.

"So you will keep us as prisoner?" Allensworth said.

"More like guests." Demo said. "Or we can displace you on the far side of the galaxy."

"History just repeats itself unless you learn from it." Merriell said.

Mickind gave the Alexandria's first officer a curious look. "Is that a term used by humans?" He asked.

Merriell nodded. "Yes. It is clear that you have not learned from your past mistakes so you want to make whole new ones. Displacing us is not the answer."

"We need to keep the integrity of the Malkins as well as the existence of our race a secret." Demo said.

"While I understand and respect your ideals. They won't be upheld unless you let us go." Allensworth said. "You have to look at this from the bigger picture. Look what happened when you kept the crew of the Thunderchild here. Not only was your society thrown into chaos, but another starship came looking for them. Now suddenly, two ships and their crews are gone and you think you've solved the problem but you haven't. You've just made it worse. More starships are going to come looking and then what? Are you going to keep them here too?"

"If it gets too out of hand, we'll have to displace you." Demo said.

"Then you're gonna have to displace the whole Federation because the disappearance of one ship will cause others to look for it and then you displace the whole Federation which will cause factions to wonder what happened to the Federation. Even our enemies will wonder and then investigate the disappearance and then you've got a bigger problem. A group of people who will take your technology by force. You jeopardize everything you hold dear by keeping us here."

"We'll have to displace them too." Demo replied.

Allensworth sighed. He felt as if he was getting no where with the council leader. "Then what? Are you going to displace the entire galaxy? Just to keep your little secret? The best way to keep a secret is to sometimes tell others."

Demo didn't reply. He looked away as if something else had caught his attention but in reality he was pondering the captain's statement. The dark skinned human had made a valid point. If others came, they'd have to displace them and then it would lead to the Malkins displacing everyone but themselves. If the Malkins were to keep what they had then they would have to trust this Federation and its members with their existence and their privacy which both Allensworth and Stork claimed would happen.

Demo finally returned his gaze back to Captain Allensworth. "Captain, I understand what you speak. I will allow you and your people to return to your ship on the notion that we will remain in secret."

"I will advise Starfleet Command to initiate General Order Seven on your people, which forbids any contact with you or approach by any starship to your world." Allensworth said.

"Has there been any world that has such an order placed on it?" Mickind asked.

Allensworth nodded. "Yes there is. Another world visited by Starfleet was deemed too dangerous to be visited and this order was placed upon it. The breaking of this order is punishable by death."

Demo nodded. "It is agreed. Your people are not to return here."

"Agreed." Allensworth said.

"I'll inform my crew to prepare for departure." Stork said.

Allensworth nodded. He then looked to his away team who straightened their posture as they knew the next course of action. The captain tapped his combadge. "Allensworth to Alexandria."

"Alexandria here, sir." Ra'chel Johnson's voice replied through the combadge.

"Prepare the transporter rooms to begin beaming up the survivors of the Thunderchild."

"Aye, sir." Johnson said. "Are you ready for beam out, sir?"

"Yes, we are. Have the transporter room lock on to us and energize when ready."

"Aye, sir. Alexandria out."

Allensworth and his away team dematerialized in a display of light and an almost melody of sounds.


	7. Epilogue of Prologue?

Dawson and the other survivors pushed into the middle of their shelter, closer to the pile of fire heated rocks and listened with unease and suspicion as Lerx answered their questions about the Malkin's bizzare proposal.

"Help me understand." Vail said, holding out her empty palms. "You want to use us as batteries?"

Lerx looked at her. "Engines would be a better analogy. Even that falls short of the mark." What we are suggesting is a fusion of our strengths, for our mutual survival."

Jane narrowed her eyes at Lerx. "But you did say that you'd be using our bodies as a source of power."

"In the short term, yes." Lerx replied.

Marzetti, who kept his hands busy threading fibers into a loop of a snowshoe. "Why not use one of those creatures that killed Johnson?"

"It's not merely biochemical reactions that we require." Lerx said. "The interaction of our catoms is similar in many respects to the synapses of your brains. We need to bond with a sentient being that has enough neuroelectric activity to power our catoms. Animals will not suffice. If you help us we can help you by allowing our catoms to inhance your immune systesm and able you to adapt to this world's aggressive diseases." He then pointed to Jane's wounded leg. "They would also speed your recovery from injuries."

"So what's the worse case scenario?" Dawson asked.

"Death." Lerx said.

"The answer is no." Vail said.

"Please reconsider while we have the strenght to control the process of the fusion." Lerx said.

"We've made our decision." Dawson said. "We are going to leave this frozen wasteland and head towards the equator...whichever direction that is."

"Then we all will absolutely die." Lerx said.

At that, the officers of the USS Thunderchild, left their Malkin counterparts.

A few days later, during their journey south, the survivors passed another interminable night huddled for warmth inside a crude shelter, which they had insulated from the wind by burying it inside a snow drift. Rows of metal poles and sheets of taut fabric lashed together kept their fresh excavation from imploding on them while they slept. It didn't keep the could out, thoough. Drafts of air so frigid that they felt like razors slipped through the gaps in the shelter and always seemed to find Fiona Jane, no matter how deep in the huddle she hid herself. She dreamed of the only thing she truly cared about: Earth, so far away now, farther than she'd ever imagined it would be. When the planet exploded and sent everyone in seperate directions, she and the others had landed on this frozen planet. According to their chronometer's the year was some time in the 3rd century. She assumed it had been damaged in the crash but it didn't matter because they were on some planet far from Federation space.

The next morning, all traces of their camp had been cleaned up, stowed away and hefted onto their backs for the continuing march toward the equator. Dawson returned from checking and collecting traps, which he put out each night in hope of snaring a few small rodents to sustain them another day. Unfortunately, he returned empty handed this time. He packed away the traps, and Vail led the team onward, into a landscape concealed by dense, spinning flurries of falling snow.

The group moved in a single file with Jane in the back, doing her best to keep up but knowing full well that she was slowing them down.

The survivors hugged the coast line rather than try to scale the rugged slopes and peaks of the barren arctic landscape. As a result, their journey often seemed to entail long periods of little to no forward progress, as they treked parallel to their course, and occasional periods of backtracking, when the shoreline switched backaround one body of water to another.

A few hours of camp and less than two hours shy of nightfall, they found themselves circumnavigating a frozen narrow fjord. Dawson started breaking a trail across the ice sheet.

Vail shouted at him. "Dawson, what the hell are you doing? Trying to get us killed?"

"It's less than a kilometer across." Dawson said. "But it's got to be at least nine kilometers long. It'll take hours to go the long way around, but if we take the shortcut, we can reach those trees and still have time to set traps before dark."

"That's a saltwater fjord. There's no guarantee it's frozen solid all the way across or that the ice is thick enough to hold your weight. If you feel like taking a bath in water that'll shock you dead in less than thirty seconds, be my guest."

Dawson reversed course and waved Vail ahead on the original trail around the fjord. On either side of the fjord, high cliffs of bare, black rock ascended into the violet sky as the small group of survivors marched on.

Meanwhile, Lerx had sacrificed the corporeal bonds of his body to preserve the integrity of his memory and awareness, and now those, too were starting to slip forever away from his grasp.

"I'm losing myself." He shared with the combiner.

Their communion had been winnowed to for voices. Lerx was the strongest, with only Nese as his close equal. Ranku and Domty clung to vestiges of coherence, but their thoughts had become increasingly disjointed as they faded.

All four knew that they were dim shadows of their former selves, but the quality of their past lives now eluded them. They wandered together through lightless catacombs of twisted metal and shattered stone, always near one another, like bodies united in deep space by a weak but undeniable gravity.

"NO! NO! NO! NO! NO!" Dawson shouted. "We have to keep moving forward. Don't you get it?"

"We'll die without help. We have to go back." Vail said.

"Are you suggesting we bond with the Malkins?" Jane asked.

"What choice do we have? Lerx said that the catoms would help us survive famine and fight of disease."

"If we're lucky." Dawson said. "If we're not then we're dead."

"We'll be dead anyway." Vail said. Without them we're dead for certain but there's a chance we could live."

The others exchanged looks and gave Vail the agreeing nod. Vail then looked around for Dawson, to confirm his assent to the plan. The first thing she saw were Dawson's abandoned snowshoes. Her eyes followed the deep ragged bootprings that led away from them to the water's edge.

"Damn it." Vail said. "Dawson's losing it." They all stumbled over to him.

"Casey, stop." Vail said. "Put your gear back on."

Dawson ignored them and kept walking toward the water. Finally, Dawson turned and aimed his phaser at them. "Don't come any closer."

"Calm down." Vail said. "We just..."

A phaser beam lashed out and struck the ground at their feet. They all recoiled and halted. Jane slowed her own approach and then stopped at a distance.

Standing ankle deep in the frothing surf, Dawson looked like a wild animal dressed in human clothing. His face was gaunt and his eyes though sunken in their sockets, bruned with feral desperation. Behind massive clouds of exhaled breath, he shivered violently, and his jaw chattered loudly. The tips of most of his fingers were black and blistered with frostbite almost to the first knuckle. Marzetti was amazed the man could still hold a phaser in his condition, let alone fire it.

"I won't go back." He said, his voice breaking into a near hysterical pitch. "I can't. Too far. Too cold. I won't go back."

"Casey, please. Put down the phaser and come with us. It's the only way for us to survive."

"Not for me." Dawson said.

In a fluid motion, he flipped the phaser around and stuck the discharge node in his mouth. He pressed the firing stud and a flash of light and heat disintergrated most of his head.

The weapon fell from his hands. His decapitated body collapsed and fell backward into the pounding surf.

Marzetti and Vail stood in silence for a minute and watched the waves was over Dawson's corpse. Then Marzetti waded out to the body, retrieved the phaser and a few items from the body and returned. Vail felt a pang of regreat at leaving Dawson unburied. She interred her guilty feelings instead. With no food left and temperatures dropping daily, she and the others could no longer aford to be sentimental; death was a simple reality in the hard land of winter.

Concealed beneath a deep blanket of snow, the shape of the terrain had become unfamiliar to Vail's eyes. She hoped that Marzetti's wilderness combat training would enable him to find the entrance to the Malkins' buried laboratory.

The effort and the exhaustion, the hunger and the pain, they all blurred together as Vail forced her aching muscles to go through the motions of taking one step and then another. Her eyes felt like kead and an overpowering desire for rest sapped her will to continue. She was all but ready to collapse face first into the snow when a hand yanked her forward.

"I found it." Marzetti said. "The tunnel's pretty slick but we can make it down."

The three of them dumped their backpacks and huddled around a cave in the snow. It looked like an enlarged version of a spider's lair. The sides of the opening were sheathed in ice and dusted with clinging snow that had gathered in a long, shallow slope at the bottom. Vail peered cautiously over the edge anddown the icy incline.

They then slid down the slope and into the dark room. Jane looked around the room. "Where do you think the Malkins are?"

"LERX?" Vail called.

No answer. Vail called out again and her voice echoed several times. All was heard was her echo and the wailing wind outside. The three of them turned around towards the slope that led outside and saw a specter looking back at them. It was barely thereat all, a ghostly approximation of a Malkin's shape, as if it was made of smoke.

Unable to mask the fear choking her voice, Vail squeaked. "Lerx?"

An electric jolt spiked through their minds and rooted them to the floor. Then a voice, feminine, malevolent and invincible, whispered inside their thoughts as a chill like death crusted the trio's bodies and faces with a delicate layer of frost.

_Nese._

Pinpricks of cold fire became unbearable stabs of pain across every square centimeter of their bodies. They wanted to scream and run but they couldn't. There was nowhere for their agony to go, so it rebounded in on itself, creating a feedback loop of suffering that drowned out every other sensation. Vail kept expected to pass out, to implode under the strain but Nese would let her mind shut down. Nese wouldn't let her escape, she just attacked relentlessly.

"No," Vail raged. "I won't become...a...cy...Borg."

The End


End file.
